Ties between North Korea, Cuba hinted at in route of seized freighter

Ties between North Korea, Cuba hinted at in route of seized freighter
Posted: Sunday, July 21, 2013 - By Billy Kenber

The voyage of the freighter Chong Chon Gang to Cuba, far from the
Chinese waters where it normally operates, is not the first time a ship
from the isolated communist country has followed that route.

When law enforcement agents boarded a rusty, aging North Korean
freighter making a rare journey down the Panama Canal last week, they
had been tipped off that they would find narcotics, Panamanian officials
said.

Instead, after a violent confrontation with the 35-member crew, they
discovered a more unusual cargo hidden in its depths: a cache of
Soviet-era weaponry concealed beneath more than 200,000 bags of Cuban
brown sugar.

The freighter's detention has thrown a light on the secretive deals
North Korea is making, possibly in breach of United Nations sanctions,
as it struggles for survival.

The voyage of the freighter Chong Chon Gang to Cuba, far from the
Chinese waters where it normally operates, is not the first time a ship
from the isolated communist country has followed that route.

North Korean vessels have made at least seven other trips to Cuba in the
past few years, with three stopping at the same two ports as the Chong
Chon Gang, according to two organizations that monitor North Korea, the
Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Several of the freighters were operated or managed by Ocean Maritime
Management (OMM) — a North Korea-based company that has links to the
country's government — which is also the registered manager of the
detained vessel, according to the Wisconsin Project, which uses ship
tracking databases to follow North Korean and other vessels.

The journeys, made by ships that normally stay close to the Korean
peninsula, are an indication that the Chong Chon Gang's voyage may have
been part of a wider, established trade route, amid an increasingly warm
relationship between the two communist nations.

In a statement, Cuba said there was a "legitimate contract" for North
Korea to repair and then return armaments, which they said included
antiaircraft missile systems and two disassembled Mig-21s. The sugar on
board was probably intended as payment for the work, according to monitors.

In the days before it was seized, the Chong Chon Gang had passed through
the Panama Canal and called at two Cuban ports: Havana and Puerto Padre,
a major sugar export center, according to the Wisconsin Project.

Another vessel, the Oun Chong Nyon Ho, made an almost identical voyage
through the canal and to the same two Cuban ports in May 2012. It passed
back through the Panamanian waterway without being searched. In May
2009, the North Korean-flagged Mu Du Bong went through the canal and
stopped in Havana, Cuba's capital city. Both are currently managed by
OMM, according to the Wisconsin Project.

A third ship, the Po Thong Gang, traveled through the canal and called
at Puerto Padre in April 2012. During the previous year, it had visited
Havana and Santiago de Cuba, according to research by Matthew Godsey of
the Wisconsin Project. It was linked to OMM until 2008 and is now
registered to a different company at the same address, Godsey said.

Griffiths said there was a "definite possibility" that other ships had
made the journey from North Korea to Cuba undetected by registering
under false ownership or by turning off on-board satellite transponders
to avoid being tracked, as the Chong Chon Gang appears to have done.

The OMM company is registered to a P.O. box number in the North Korean
capital and has 17 ships that largely ply their trade in the waters
around China. Gary Li, a senior analyst at IHS Maritime, a consultancy
firm, described it as the biggest state-owned shipping company in North
Korea.

"It claims to have shipping agents in all the major [North Korean] ports
as well as overseas, such as Dalian in China, Port Said in Egypt and
Vladivostok in Russia," he said.

OMM also owns a crew-training center and the Ryongnam Dockyard on North
Korea's west coast, which has reportedly been involved in the
construction of military vessels, he said. OMM is also responsible for
handling passport applications for all North Korean sailors.

Li said the Chong Chon Gang's detention and voyages by other ships owned
by OMM demonstrates that "some kind of 'trade route' no matter how
slight, has been established between [North Korea] and Cuba."

John Park, an expert on North Korea and associate at Harvard
University's Kennedy School of Government, said that the Chong Chon
Gang's voyage would not have been a "freelance-type transaction" but
would have been part of a "broader revenue generation effort to
essentially make money for the regime."

Park said only the military was capable of carrying out repair work on
the Cuban armaments, adding, "Given the contents of the consignment, it
looks like it is a North Korean military-linked state trading company."

Calls to the company's listed phone number were disconnected a few
seconds after being answered.

"The relationship between [North Korea] and Cuba is a lot closer than it
used to be," said Michael Madden, editor of the North Korea Leadership
Watch. "There's been a lot more contact and interactions between senior
Cuban officials and senior North Korean officials in recent years."

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the
Monterey Institute of International Studies, said the interception in
Panama is unlikely to disrupt those ties and North Korea would look for
a new route. Repairing old weapons is one of the "few things that North
Korea is good at," he said. "I don't think the North Koreans are going
to give that up."

Source: "Ties between North Korea, Cuba hinted at in route of seized
freighter / News Briefs / More news / Costa Rica Newspaper, The Tico
Times" -
http://www.ticotimes.net/More-news/News-Briefs/Ties-between-North-Korea-Cuba-hinted-at-in-route-of-seized-freighter_Sunday-July-21-2013